Portal Alive Kicking Alive Kicking release notes

Portal: Alive & Kicking released on Friday 28 August 2026 at 12:00 Eastern. That is the date on the Steam store and in the developers’ launch post. This page is the 1.0 box, not a rumour mill. For bugs testers found after noon, use known issues. For how to install the box, use getting started.

What 1.0 contains

According to the store and the launch announcement:

• A full remake of Valve’s original Portal inside the Portal 2 engine.
• The original campaign retelling Chell and GLaDOS, updated for Portal 2 retcons and aesthetics.
• Advanced chambers included with that campaign.
• A new dynamic soundtrack that mixes Portal’s drones with Portal 2’s reactive scoring.
• Steam features: single-player, captions, full controller support, nine achievements, Source SDK, Family Sharing.
• Accessibility notes on the store: save anytime, subtitle options.

It is not a two-player product. It is not Portal 2’s campaign. It is not Portal: Still Alive’s Xbox extras, even though Advanced chambers occupy the same cultural slot.

Hard requirement

Portal 2 must be installed in the same steamapps folder, on the same drive. The launch post used those words twice. The minimum spec repeats them. If you skip this, you do not have a game, you have the startup_loading.vtf error on troubleshooting.

System spec (store minimum): Windows 10-class Steam client, 3.0 GHz P4 or Dual Core 2.0, 2 GB RAM, 128 MB Shader 2.0b GPU, DirectX 9.0c, 4 GB free, DirectX-compatible sound. Additional note: Portal 2 in the same steamapps folder.

Launch-day distribution notes

The developers posted that some people could not download and that they were checking with Steam. The workaround they offered: wishlist the game, then download and launch from there. If your library looks empty on 28 August, try that before assuming the app is hidden.

They also warned that mods in the base Portal 2 directory may break Alive & Kicking. Vanilla Portal 2 plus this remake is the supported pair.

Official workarounds that shipped with 1.0

These are not future patches. They are in the launch post:

• Missing background image materials/console/startup_loading.vtf → same drive as Portal 2.
• Game closes when a map starts → -threads 1 and multithreaded rendering off.

Keep them until a numbered hotfix says they are obsolete. The tools hub exists to repeat them in more words.

Promised after 1.0

The launch post asked players to look forward to continued updates, including:

• Elite-difficulty bonus maps.
• A downloadable soundtrack.
• Bug fixes.

The store page also said additional content may release for free as it is developed. A separate Steam app for the soundtrack already existed as a listing (fourteen tracks, “listed as unreleased extra” on older captures), with names like Chamber Lock, Layman’s Terms, and Fling Into Space. That DLC is extra audio, not a new gun.

Elite maps are not in the Advanced menu until they ship. Do not hunt them with the console. When they exist, advanced chambers will say so.

Credits that matter to the notes

• Developer and publisher: Rhubarb & Rhubarb.
• Soundtrack comments from Dot Operator: the score is original and not under the same legal freeze as Valve’s Source code.
• Store quote: Jeep Barnett, Portal developer.
• Engine: Portal 2 / Source.

Fourteen years of public demos (2012, 2014, later captures) are historical. 1.0 is the Steam build. Do not treat a Bolloxed demo as patch notes.

What 1.0 means for this wiki

Guides assume the game is released. The walkthrough assumes Chambers 00–19 plus a new escape. The tier list assumes 2026 lighting. If a hotfix moves a catcher, those pages change; this page gets a date stamp.

Play it. It is out. It is single-player. It wants Portal 2 on the same disk. Everything else is either a chamber or a ticket.